By Kathleen Shea Kirstein
The telephone cord is so short that I feel trapped in a 3-foot space. I can’t pace, which is what I want to be doing—anything to dispel this adrenaline circulating through my body. I am on hold with the Passport Office to find out why my passport did not arrive in the same envelope as my husband's. We had applied for our passports several months before, after winning a trip to Cancun. My husband's was a renewal, and mine would be my first-ever passport. I was thrilled, but now I stand here on hold listening to the crappy elevator music..

Finally, a voice on the other end of the phone said, “Your birth certificate was filed fourteen months after your birth. You did not send documentation to explain the delay in filing your birth certificate. We require this documentation to proceed.” She discussed that a packet of information would arrive in two weeks.

I barely choked out the words, “Ok, thank you.”

I called my mother. Hoping she would have the answer to this question. We were very close and talked at least once a week.


“It must be a clerical error, I‘m sure it will be fine,” she said and hung up on me.

By Dr. Adam Anthony
Author’s Note: I wrote this piece from a place of healing and purpose — to honor the complexity of adoption, faith, and storytelling. Every adoptee’s story is sacred. Every family’s story is layered. And between them lies the work of truth-telling, grace, and growth.
May we keep creating spaces where both truth and love can coexist.

***

I asked my adoptive mom if I was mentioned in her book.
Her reply was short: “No names.”

Seeing how vague and unclear that was, I politely asked if I could read her book before it launched. In one of the chapters from her advanced copy, she’d written, “I would adopt before marriage.” Naturally, that led me to believe I might be featured in some way.

It didn’t sound harmless to me—it raised a small red flag.
Instead of being anxious or defensive, I did what felt most respectful: I asked for clarity.

Her response was “no.”

Then she went on to explain that this was her personal story—her journey of faith and purpose—and that what God placed in her to do would be told in her testimony. The simple question somehow became an accusation. She flipped it back on me, as though I was wrong for even asking.

What started as a sincere show of support for her as a new author quickly became a moment that revealed deeper cracks in our relationship. As an adoptive son, I’ve learned that our stories are deeply intertwined—but also, they are not the same.

My identity, my story, my truth still belong to me.

By Taya Reed
When Cher sings, “If I Could Turn Back Time,” the lyrics stir something deep in me. As an adoptee, those words often carry layers of longing, grief, and regret. I’ve felt this in conversations with my birth parents—moments where we circled around what could have been and entered what I call the “what-iffing” phase of reunion.
​
Adoption is not only about the life we live; it’s also about the life we imagine we might have lived. Betty Jean Lifton describes this as the Ghost Kingdom—a psychological space where adoptees grapple with missing pieces of their history, lost relationships, and the haunting question of what if.

By Cindy Shultz
In my mid-twenties, I was raising two children by myself while caring for my mother, whose ever-changing mental health needs kept me on notice. I began seeing someone twelve years older than me. He drank a lot and told me stories about his chaotic adventures, like growing up traveling with the circus and getting lost in the desert while hopped up on meth and peyote. Though the stories should have been a red flag, they sounded like adventure to me. His handy nature was helpful for home and car repairs and his vibrant personality and exotic tales brought excitement to my otherwise laborious existence. By the time Emerson Blake Bennett came along, I was a beautifully broken mess.

I grew up in poverty with both mental illness and alcoholism in the home. My parents barely had adulting skills, much less social-emotional ones. As such, I had a hard time making friends, and my schoolmates picked on me. So, I spent the long days of my childhood bicycling around the vast rural countryside with my imaginary entourage, exploring abandoned houses. I couldn't wait to be free from the chaos at home, but pregnant at 17 and again at 20, my freedom came in the form of buying a mobile home on an acre of land with money from my deceased father’s life insurance policy. Within three years, my mother moved in after a stroke exacerbated her schizo-affective disorder.

The emotional emptiness of my childhood—stemming from parentification, unmet needs, and a lack of friends—created a void that I filled with reckless behavior, codependent relationships, and late nights at a country bar in West Lodi, Ohio (population 223). Huppy’s was one of the bars I frequented with my dad as a child, and it felt like home when the world seemed too big. The owner, Ed, was Dad’s good friend. He missed him and loved to tell me stories while pointing out the old rusty foothold traps, vintage metal signs, and shotguns my dad donated to decorate his bar. The bartenders, who were local housewives, became my friends.

This latest relationship brought an exciting distraction, like a ripple through stagnant water. I had grown accustomed to casting emotional dependency on unsuspecting partners who had little to offer. It was the life I knew. Familiar felt safer than the unknown. A few years in, I realized I had feelings for this man in a way I’d never experienced. Was this… love?